There has been so much discussion in the past 2 weeks over Hitachi Dynamic Provisioning (HDP) and the size of our pages which are, by comparison, large when compared to other thin provisioning implementations. As we all recall from our first course in Computing 101 and memory management, larges pages in memory provide better performance but at the expense of using more capacity. In the “olde” days of extremely expensive memories, large pages were considered a very bad thing. Now let’s look at this phenomenon as it applies to storage, and we see a different argument since: (1) the scale of costs is dramatically different, (2) we’re only looking at disk access, not the majority of I/O which is typically satisfied out of cache, and (3) in our HDP implementation, we actually can use the entire 42 MB page depending on whether the next WRT is sequential or random. I won’t rehash all the arguments here; you can read them all in Hu’s blog, Marc Farley’s, Nigel Poulton’s (replete with video; nice touch, Nigel!), not to mention Tony Asaro’s this morning.
So, very briefly today, my buddy-blogger from EMC posted another LoIQ (List of Inane Questions). I say briefly because, shortly after his post, I asked to have it removed.
I’ve been bouncing around various blogs in the past few days answering questions on the HDS announcement from last Wednesday: The Hitachi High Availability Manager (HHAM, HAM, AM, call it whatever you want and make any jokes you wish). Like any announce, we try to keep things fairly high level, since in a 20-minute webcast, we’re not going to be discussing how we deal with world wide names, port assignments, and the like. We roll out the details later and as the questions come in. This is standard procedure for any technical announcement from any company.
Making Sense Out of Scrambled Eggs, or Re-assembling Humpty Dumpty
By: Claus Mikkelsen on May 28, 2009
So I enjoyed the responses on the anagram and there were a lot of correct answers submitted, but unfortunately I failed to mention there was no prize involved. Sorry folks.
As long as I can remember, the EiaB syndrome has been alive and well. Technology moves from 100MB drives to 200MB drives? Too many eggs in one basket, people would scream!! This cry is an endless industry-wide issue. The problem is part paranoia, and partly adapting to the constant “bar raising” that technology brings. The other problem, as Howard Marks mentioned to me today, is many folks have ended up with the occasional crappy basket from time to time. So the concern is real… more
Every few months or so, while driving to or from the office or airport or whatever, I see a “teaser” billboard that is very good at getting your attention but doesn’t tell you what it’s trying to advertise until days or weeks later. Intriguingly, we keep looking at it every time we drive by until finally, the message, and the product being advertised, is revealed. Sound familiar?
There has been a bit of a skirmish in the enterprise storage industry of late, certainly as is relates to HDS.
We all know what a “black box” signifies. “It is a technical term for a device, system or object when it is viewed in terms of its input, output and transfer characteristics without any knowledge required of its internal workings.” I know this because I just read the Wikipedia definition and did a copy/paste into this blog. I think Wikipedia just defined itself as a black box. I don’t know its inner workings but I do know that when I need the information, it is there. Thank you Jimmy Wales!!
Barry, Barry, Barry…watch your mud…it’s about to sling back in your direction….
I’m getting a little ticked off over this banter of what company was first with what technology, and Barry Burke, the self-proclaimed storage anarchist, made some comments on our own Christopher Bertrand’s blog that need some serious corrections. I’m not sure where he gets his information, but he should be questioning his sources. The topic here is replication, internal and remote. Let’s take a trip through history to set the record straight…Barry claims that EMC invented it all which is not only false, but he is now hiding behind his proclaimed “legal rulings” to justify his claims, which are also bogus.
To anyone who just happened to have crawled out from under a rock, EMC made the long-awaited announcement of what had been rumored to be either the DMX-5 or the Tigon. Final choice: Symmetrix V-Max. So under the banner of “Overtake the Future” the announcement struck me as “Catching Up With the Past”. Wading through all the predictable marketing terms of “earth-shattering breakthroughs” and “over the top bestest new technology on the planet, ever” was an announcement that left a “ho hum” feel with me. And since much of the promised new function won’t be available for a bit, the announcement was more of a roadmap of where EMC thinks they will be going.
